The Draw Bot

I'm not sure who first came up this idea, I found several places on the net (see links at the end). Anyway: its a great project, and so much fun!

You need:

• felt pens
• a paper or plastic cup
• adhesive tape
• a small toy motor
• batteries for the motor
  
• a small weight

So this is how our draw bot looks like:

It's very easy to build. Attach the felt pens to the cup with adhesive tape so that it stands on them. The motor goes onto the top. Find a place for the batteries, where they fit best and do not cause the bot to fall over (could be inside the cup as well). Most important part: Attach the weight (e.g. a screw or a screw nut) eccentrically (important!) on the motor axis.

Then remove the caps from the felt pens, start the motor, and put your draw bot on a piece of paper! The weight attached to the motor axis makes the bot shake around, which causes it to move in random directions.

Here's an example of what out draw bot did:

By trying different positions for the motor, the weight and the batteries you can archive different patterns! Experiment! Use different weights. Turn the motor so that the axis shows sideways. You can also try other bot shapes. Try 2 paper cups glued together. Try 4 pens. Instead of a cup you could use a piece of cardboard. There are endless possibilities for variation.

Here we replaced the weight with a screw, causing the bot to perform different motion patterns:

And finally the promised links to other draw bot pages:

• Kid's Draw Bot
• Drawbot - 2001
  
• Cup Draw (Low Tech)